SQL Monitor 5

SQL Monitor 5.0 release notes

Last updated 18 April 2016

When should I upgrade?

We aim to release a build every two weeks that includes the latest incremental features and bug fixes. These builds are identified by a three-part version number, such as v5.0.8. So if you’ve identified a particular feature from the release notes that you need, you can download the relevant build.

If you want to wait until all aspects of a feature have been fully completed, it’s best to use a quarterly minor version release, identified by a two-part version number such as v5.1.

Version 5.0.11 - March 17th, 2016

Enhancements

SRP-10107: Improved UI and documentation around monitoring servers on a different network from the base monitor

SRP-10220: Improved messaging on the Add SQL Server screen to clarify what syntax is required

SRP-10289: The Edit and Remove options for maintenance windows are now accessible directly from the maintenance window column

SRP-10393: The links to the documentation from the Authentication Settings and availability group overview pages are now clearly displayed even when the information banner has been dismissed

Fixes

SRP-1527: Service pack levels are now displayed correctly on the machine overview page

SRP-4468: Using single quotes/apostrophes or double quotes in a group name no longer causes an error on the group overview page

SRP-9179: The times shown on the “Database unavailable” alert are now displayed in the same time zone

SRP-9509: The link to the PDF license agreement in the installer now works correctly

SRP-9537/SRP-9538: Improved UI of installer to avoid truncations

SRP-10108: If you’re logged in to SQL Monitor in one tab, and then you log out in another tab, attempting to deactivate a license in the first tab no longer displays a blank error banner, and instead takes you to the login screen

SRP-10124: On the Configuration > About screen, the Server HOST .NET now shows the highest version of .NET that’s installed

SRP-10223: You’re no longer able to reinstall a version of SQL Monitor that you already have installed

SRP-10244: After suspending monitoring for a cluster, the status of the nodes no longer displays as “Monitoring”

SRP-10253: On the availability group overview page, the availability group status no longer incorrectly shows as “Unconfigured”

SRP-10416: Cluster failovers and hardware changes no longer cause analysis data to become inaccessible on the Analysis Graph

Version 5.0.10 - March 4th, 2016

Enhancements

SRP-9606: Improved the accuracy of the start time for long-running queries

SRP-9609: Improved performance by increasing the default time range on the Analysis Graph from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. The sparklines on the overview pages now also show 15-minute periods instead of 5-minute periods

Version 5.0.9 - February 24th, 2016

Fixes

SRP-10359: Single threshold alert customization is properly persisted when changing from multiple thresholds

Version 5.0.8 - February 23rd, 2016

Features

SRP-9600: Modified the default collection intervals to reduce impact on CPU and memory

SRP-9811: SQL Monitor now raises alerts at only one severity by default, and the threshold values have also been updatedNote: this only affects the defaults - we’ll keep any alert settings you’ve already customized. However, restoring defaults for an alert will apply the new default settings. To see a full list of alerts, along with their default threshold values, see List of alerts

SRP-10298: Improved the default time periods for data purging, so that data you’re likely to want to view trends for is kept for longer than performance troubleshooting data

SRP-10306: When you start monitoring a machine or cluster, SQL Monitor now only adds the instances that are running (and not instances that are disabled or not started)Note: failover cluster instances are an exception – SQL Monitor adds all failover cluster instances, whether they’re running or not

SRP-10297: SQL Monitor now reviews the 15 minutes (instead of 5 minutes) prior to the end of a “Blocking process” alert to find out when the block started

SRP-10312: SQL Monitor no longer raises multiple “Blocking process” alerts if there are two or more processes being blocked by the same root process

SRP-10316: For the “Blocking process” alert, the Alert details page now displays the last recorded blocking time after the blocking process has ended, instead of displaying “Unknown”

Version 5.0.7 - February 3rd, 2016

Features

SRP-9813: SQL Monitor now only suspends performance-relatedand custom alerts during maintenance windows. All other alerts continue to be raised as normal

SRP-9817: Changed the “Job failed” alert to “Job failing”, and changed the alert type from Event to Continuous. It will be automatically marked as Ended when the job runs successfully again, or when the job runs again and fails (in which case the original alert will be marked as Ended and a new alert will be raised)

SRP-10231: You can now configure the following alert types by time threshold:

Database unavailable

Monitoring error (host machine data collection)

Monitoring stopped (host machine credentials)

Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)

Monitoring stopped (SQL Server credentials)

Availability group - database not healthy

Availability group - listener offline

Availability group - not ready for automatic failover

Availability group - replica not healthy

Fixes

SRP-10252: SQL Monitor no longer crashes if you change or disable the password for the account used to connect to the monitoring service (base monitor)

Version 5.0.6 - January 26th, 2016

Fixes

SRP-10258: The SQL Monitor installer and most of the components are now digitally signed using SHA-256This version is functionally identical to v5.0.5.

Version 5.0.5 - January 20th, 2016

Features

SRP-9810: You can now configure the following alert types by time threshold:

Machine unreachable

SQL Server instance unreachable

SRP-9815: The “Blocked process” alert has been changed to “Blocking process”, and is now only raised for the root process that’s blocking other processes, instead of being raised for every blocked process

Fixes

SRP-10009: Add Availability group alerts to the select menu on Alert Configuration

SRP-10097: Top waits field misalignment fixed

SRP-10120: If you use a domain service account or a Managed Service Account for your Base Monitor service, you’ll no longer see an error on the Configuration > About and Configuration > Monitored servers pages

SRP-10232: On the Configuration > Licensing page, the loading icon for the Deactivate button is now aligned correctly with the button

SRP-10243: Fixed slow loading of Global Overview page

Version 5.0.4 - January 6th, 2016

Features

SRP-9809: Changed the cap on alert emails from 1000 alerts per server within 24 hours to 30 alerts of a particular type for a particular monitored object within 24 hours. You can change the email cap via the Configuration > Email settings page

SRP-9981: Suspended instances no longer appear on the Global Overview or Machine Overview pages, or in the Alert Inbox

Fixes

SRP-8327: Custom metrics no longer change database state

SRP-10151: Active Directory users who were migrated using SID history mapping can now be authenticated

SRP-10157: For nodes without a SQL Server instance, the Disk space alert details page no longer shows the message "No data" in place of the Disk space used section. Instead, it simply doesn't show the Disk space used section

SRP-10168/SRP-10187: The Alert Inbox table is now displayed correctly for read-only users

SRP-10188: The Base Monitor executable for v5.0.3 was unsigned, but it’s signed once again for v5.0.4

SRP-10196: Availability group statuses on overview pages are now updated if a server becomes unlicensed

SRP-10212: Uninstalling SQL Monitor and then installing a new version no longer results in the error message “Service ‘SQL Monitor Base Monitor’ (MonitorBaseDeploymentServiceLocal) failed to start...”

SRP-10213: The SQL Monitor installer no longer fails to run if the file RedGate.Response.Engine.Alerting.Base.Service.exe.settings.config is missing

Version 5.0.3 - December 9th, 2015

Updating to version 5.0.3 involves a SQL Monitor schema upgrade. We recommend you back up the data repository database before you update to version 5.0.3.

Features

SRP-9480: Replaced the data retrieval algorithm for Disk avg. read time and Disk avg. write time for improved accuracy and reliabilityNote: this effectively invalidates any previously collected data for these two metrics, so the Analysis Graph will no longer show previously collected data for them

SRP-9839: Improved interaction with the Monitored servers tree view list. Clicking the icon or the highlighted area to the left of the icon now takes you to the corresponding overview screen, whereas previously you had to click the text to reach the corresponding overview screen

SRP-9974: Added new listener statuses on the Availability group overview page, to take into account availability groups with more than one listener

SRP-10081: Improved the clarity of two Availability group database health alert messages

SRP-10123:If you copy or share the link to the Analysis Graph and the latest time shown on the graph is the present time, then when the link is opened later, the latest time shown will be the “new” present time (ie the time when the link is opened).Note: if you copy or share the link to the Analysis Graph and the latest time shown on the graph is earlier than the present time, then the original selection will remain the same, regardless of when the link is opened

Fixes

Settings for the config file RedGate.Response.Engine.Alerting.Base.Service.exe.settings.configare no longer overwritten on upgradeNote: this will not take effect until you upgrade from version 5.0.3

SRP-9474: For SQL Server 2014 queries, the final characters of the queries no longer appear to be missing when the query details are not expanded

SRP-9945: All success message banners now disappear automatically after five seconds

SRP-9985: When a Disk space alert is raised for a node on a cluster, the alert details now only show the SQL Server instances hosted by that node

SRP-9992: The Details tab for database and replica alerts now shows the correct health state

SRP-10003: On the Availability group overview page, in the Availability replicas grid, in the Failover column, “Data loss” is no longer shown in red for asynchronous replicas that are in the Synchronizing state

SRP-10083: Longer alert headers are now displayed correctly

SRP-10110: On the Availability group overview page, the values for Log growth, Send rate, and Redo rate in the Availability replicas table are now updated when the page automatically refreshes

SRP-10112: On the Availability group overview page, both of the Log growth columns (in the Primary replica table and the Availability replicas table) now show the log bytes flushed/sec for the primary databases only

SRP-10113/SRP-10150: On the Availability group overview page, the Send rate column has been changed to Received rate and shows the rate of log bytes received/sec. This change was made because of a SQL Server bug that freezes the send rate to its last non-zero value, meaning the reported send rate values were almost always incorrect

SRP-10116: Icons in the Group list are now aligned correctly

SRP-10117: On the Availability group overview page, the Last 24 hrs counter no longer decreases when you clear alerts, but stays the same to reflect the number of alerts raised in the last 24 hours

SRP-10139: Switching from Active Directory authentication to default authentication and then attempting to switch back to Active Directory no longer results in an error message

SRP-10142: When adding a new user to the white list, white space at the end of the username is now ignored

SRP-10152: On the Overview and Alert Inbox pages, monitored entities in groups no longer disappear from the Monitored servers list

SRP-10153: Deleting a group that contains at least one monitored entity no longer results in an error message

SRP-10172: When you export a csv file from the Analysis Graph in Chrome, the end of the Analysis Graph URL no longer disappears

SRP-10173: On the Analysis Graph, the Export (csv) link now works in Firefox and Internet Explorer

Version 5.0.2 - November 25th, 2015

Features

Bookmark and share Analysis Graph links

Open links to the Analysis Graph in a new tab

The alerts “Backup overdue” and “Log backup overdue” now take replication into account

When you add a cluster, SQL Monitor now monitors all standalone instances on nodes in the cluster, as well as failover cluster instances.

If you add new instances or nodes to a cluster that you’re already monitoring, SQL Monitor will automatically detect and monitor these additions.

If you're already monitoring a specific node within a cluster, and the cluster contains availability groups that you want to monitor, you’ll need to re-add the cluster when you upgrade to SQL Monitor 5. Otherwise, SQL Monitor won't detect and monitor these availability groups.

If you need to keep historical data from the cluster, make sure you don't remove the original cluster, even after you've re-added it. Instead, once you've re-added the cluster, you should suspend monitoring on the original cluster. This way, you can retain all historical data on the old cluster, while collecting new data on the newly added cluster.

Fixes

SRP-9523: Fixed a situation which could cause monitoring to stop when missing performance counters are detected

SRP-9595: Online help text now integrates correctly across different versions of SQL Monitor

SRP-9529: Fixed a situation where the SQL Monitor base monitor could use large amounts of memory if it encountered a large job history on a monitored SQL Server

SRP-9441: Corrected the fill factor description on the Analysis page

SRP-9494: Added the following to the list of ignored waits: DBMIRROR_DBM_MUTEX, DBMIRROR_EVENTS_QUEUE, DBMIRRORING_CMD, ONDEMAND_TASK_QUEUE, QDS_CLEANUP_STALE_QUERIES_TASK_MAIN_LOOP_SLEEP and QDS_PERSIST_TASK_MAIN_LOOP_SLEEP

SRP-9153: Incorrect data no longer appears in the database selection fields on the Analysis page